Cyber Crime and Cyber Terrorism

FIGURE 17.13
Botnet pillars

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Conclusion and future trends (tor, mobile and social networks)
The advantages of this approach are:
• The traffic is encrypted.
• The hidden services do not rely on public-facing IP addresses.
The threat posed by the spread of botnets is still, unfortunately, a prerogative of 
worlds that, for various reasons (technical or historical), are closely linked to the 
words “Internet” and “Computer.” Moreover, only recently we have seen concrete 
examples of its translation into effective criminal activities (monetization of the op-
erational capabilities of a botnet).
Google uses the Internet, e-mail uses the Internet, Home Banking makes use of 
the Internet. Are we still using the Internet to play with a friend (who lives on the 
other side of the world) through our home Wi-Fi? Is “Waze App” still using the 
Internet? Yes, of course.
If you can see YouTube through your Smart TV maybe you need an antivirus or 
(why not) a firewall installed on it (usually installed on a PC or Laptop).
The countermeasures described in the previous paragraph should be extended to 
those vendors whose core business to date has been completely different. In a not 
too distant future, a DOS attack to a “TV broadcasting cable system” or to the VOIP 
system of a telephony operator—two real examples of critical infrastructure—could 
foreshadow Cyber Terrorism scenarios.
FIGURE 17.14
C&C server as a hidden service.

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CHAPTER 17
Responding to cyber crime and cyber terrorism
The aforementioned scenarios pose severe concerns for botnet development in 
the future, extending the threatened perimeter of the target infrastructures. Hence, a 
plurality of stakeholders will be called to cope with this problem, via different bal-
ance of synergic countermeasures to mitigate the risk.